A Patent Lie (29 page)

“You're being unusually diplomatic, Counselor. They're going to want to know what leverage Judge Farnsworth has on them. Tell your client that the U. S. attorney for the Northern District of California is in this courthouse every day. If I thought there was some kind of collusion between your client and Mr. Thorpe's, there's no reason, is there, why I shouldn't have a talk with the U. S. attorney about a criminal antitrust violation?” Her eyes twinkled. She was enjoying herself. “And I'm not looking for a free license, just a reasonable one. Vaxtek will in time make back its investment, and then some. Your client—and Mr. Thorpe's client—just won't get the monopoly profits they were hoping for.”

Thorpe was out of his chair again, and pacing the chambers. “This is a decision that has to be made in Switzerland—”

“But they're going to listen to you,” Farnsworth said. “They'd be fools not to.”

Thorpe said, “I'd advise them to take the trial.”

“What about you, Mr. Seeley. How are you going to advise your client?”

“I'd advise them to take the license. There won't be a public record. It wouldn't be in the news for more than a day.” And, he thought, both sides would do everything they could to appease Lily. “Their stock might even recover.”

Thorpe was at the far end of the chambers, studying the bindings on the judge's bookshelf, but he heard Seeley and Farnsworth. He was smart and, for all his objections, he was going to recommend that his client take the license.

“Let me know your clients' decision by five p.m. Friday.”

Thorpe coughed to clear his throat, as if he were about to make a pronouncement, but said only, “Of course, Your Honor.”

Other than a few late courthouse workers leaving for the day, the plaza was empty. The press, if they had been there, were gone, including Odum, the solitary, earnest reporter still after her story. Late-autumn twilight mixed with the fog and the distant drone of automobiles heading home on the freeway. The fragrance of roasting coffee was again in the air and, improbably, the winey scent of overripe apples.

Thorpe said to Seeley, “You've been practicing law how long—twenty, twenty-five years?” He didn't wait for an answer. “I know it's trite, but the longer you practice, the easier it is to lose sight of the principles that brought you into the profession.”

Seeley imagined Thorpe as a skinny law student, in a fever for truth and justice as he rushed from class to class. “What are you getting at?”

“Wherever he thought the equities lay, Jake Ehrlich would never have tried to subvert his own client's case.”

“If that's true—and I don't know that it is—it's only because he never had an adversary who tried to make his own case for him.”

When they reached the edge of the plaza, Seeley stopped. The gray creased face turned to him. “You mean our little talk at lunch? I was speaking entirely hypothetically—but of course, I told you that. What Ellen said about a collusive lawsuit? I wouldn't have any part of one!” The crafty eyes dulled then
flashed. “Would you?”

Thorpe's feint was no surprise. This was a man accustomed to neither confessions nor amends. Nor would the police catch him up in the investigation of Pearsall's death. If Lucy Pearsall could identify Dusollier, that might make the connection between the collusive lawsuit and Pearsall's death, but only if Lieutenant Phan chose to pursue it. And, even if he did, Thorpe would have built an impenetrable wall between himself and his client's wrongdoing.

Seeley said, “You should never have done this.”

Thorpe's expression turned contrite, then belligerent, with an actor's ease. “How could I forget—you're the lawyer who never makes a mistake.”

To Seeley's astonishment, he felt a smile taking form. “I make mistakes all the time,” he said. “One is forgetting that there are people walking the streets, esteemed professionals, who can commit the most monstrous acts, acts that would shame any human soul, yet not suffer a moment's regret.”

Such an intense, cold hatred consumed Thorpe's features that for an instant, Seeley shivered. Then the lawyer recovered, returning Seeley's smile with one of his own. “Goodbye, Michael. You have been a . . . splendid adversary.”

Seeley watched the lawyer's gray back disappear into the crowd of office workers and tourists thronging toward Market Street. He had no idea what attracted American tourists to San Francisco, other than the receding but carefully burnished corners and echoes of a fabled past. But he now understood what European travelers found here—an indifferent, heartbreaking beauty, one that casually wrapped the deepest cruelties in its embrace—and why they thought of it as America's most European city.

TWENTY-FIVE

Lieutenant Herbert Phan had the
San Francisco Chronicle
open on his lap in Heilbrun, Hardy's thirty-seventh-floor reception area and looked up only when Seeley approached. “We've been trying to find you all morning.”

Seeley glanced at his watch. It wasn't even eight thirty. He wondered, Why is it that I can have a level conversation with someone as deeply corrupt as Emil Thorpe, yet if a police detective makes a mild crack, I want to throttle him?

Phan took his time folding the paper before following Seeley up the open staircase, past Tina's empty desk, to Pearsall's office. Seeley took the chair behind the desk and the detective the one across from it, resting a notepad on his crossed knee. He had on the same zippered boots as the last time.

“Why don't you tell us what you know about the murder of Robert Pearsall.” The small smile didn't disturb the hairline mustache.

“You've decided it's murder.”

“First degree, probably—that's up to the district attorney. But definitely homicide.”

“Lucy Pearsall identified Dusollier? The Swiss.”

“We spoke with your Swiss colleague yesterday evening at his hotel.”

“Adversary,” Seeley said, “not colleague.” If Lucy made the identification, Phan was playing with him and Seeley didn't know why.

“The night of Pearsall's murder, Mr. Dusollier was in Calistoga, at the mud baths.”

“That doesn't mean he didn't arrange it.”

Phan opened the notepad, but didn't look at it. “How do you think Mr. Dusollier fits into this?”

Phan was trolling. Seeley said, “I'd only be speculating.”

“I like lawyers' hypotheticals. I had a year of law school. USF, here in the city.”

“No offense,” Seeley said, “but this is for the DA.”

“You obviously think St. Gall Laboratories arranged this murder. Why else would you send us after Mr. Dusollier?”

Seeley swiveled his chair to the view outside so that he faced the window. A single sailboat was making its way toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

“In our experience,” Phan said, “corporations don't kill off innocent lawyers.”

Seeley watched the sailboat's progress. “Corporations don't, but their employees do, particularly if they think their lives are about to fall apart.”

“And how was Mr. Dusollier's life about to fall apart?”

“Start higher up. Say you're St. Gall's general counsel, in Switzerland. You're making and spending more money than you ever dreamed possible. Expensive clothes for the second wife, private school for the new kids, cars, a servant or two, the small villa on the Côte d'Azur. You're fifty-five, sixty years old, you don't have a franc in savings and, because you haven't really practiced law for the past twenty years, there's no one who will hire you. You helped your CEO set up a collusive lawsuit in a major case and you've sworn to him that the deal is airtight. Then your opponent's lawyer threatens to wreck the deal. If he does, you know you'll lose your job. So you order someone lower down the ladder, the ambitious young lawyer who's directly responsible for the case, to eliminate the problem. Maybe you point him toward the company's head of security, who might know someone who could help.”

The only fl aw in Seeley's theory was that Leonard said Pearsall had helped to set up the collusion. Either Leonard was lying or, once having set the collusive lawsuit in motion, Pearsall changed his mind.

Seeley said, “People are fearful. The thought of losing something they value can drive them to acts that, a day earlier, they couldn't even imagine.”

“You can't believe—”

“Leaders of countries have started wars for less.”

“And you think the person at the bottom was Dusollier?” The detective sounded unimpressed.

“An order from the boss to a bureaucrat.”

“Not a bureaucrat,” Phan said, “a lawyer.”

“Law schools teach ethics, not morals.”

When Seeley turned back from the window, Phan's features had slipped into indifference, even boredom.

Phan said, “After the story appeared in the
Chronicle
, we started thinking in the same direction. Except, the way we see it, anything that applies to St. Gall also applies to you.”

Seeley said, “If you went to law school, you know I can't talk to you about my client.”

Phan's fine features narrowed; the bored expression disappeared. “We don't mean your client. We mean you.”

Seeley had never liked the police, their arrogance and unearned authority. But it was a long time since he made the mistake of underestimating their cunning or their power. “This is a wet dream you had, right?”

“We've been watching you since the first time you called us, misrepresenting yourself as Mrs. Pearsall's lawyer. What would that look like to a criminal jury—a complete stranger inserting himself into a murder case, just like that, for no good reason? Then there was that incident in Chinatown. You are brutally attacked, but you make no report to the police. When the desk man at your hotel asks, you tell him it was nothing.”

“Your men saw me being beaten and they didn't stop it?” Phan shrugged. “They said you handled yourself very ably.” He gave Seeley another of his miniature smiles. “And—don't ask me why—juries are always impressed when the accused returns to the scene of the crime.”

At first, Seeley didn't understand. Then he remembered the dark sedan parked by the train tracks in San Mateo. Phan's people had been there, too.

Through the glass panel next to the office door, Palmieri looked in and, when Seeley shook his head, pointed in the direction of his own office. Seeley nodded.

“And you think I'm involved in the murder of Robert Pearsall?”

“This is one of the questions we are looking into.”

“I never even met Pearsall. I was in Buffalo when he was killed.”

“But, as you said of Mr. Dusollier, that doesn't mean you weren't in some way responsible.”

Dozens of sailboats were on the bay now, a swarm of moths zigzagging toward the Golden Gate.

“And my motive would be, what? To take over his case?”

Phan frowned. “We're fully aware that your law practice in Buffalo barely pays the rent.”

“So I kill lawyers to drum up business.”

“Possibly. Maybe your life was, as you say, about to fall apart. But the motive we're looking into is that your brother is an employee of Vaxtek. Evidently his entire wealth is tied up in the company. He took a big bet that you would win the case for him.”

“And we didn't win.”

Phan yawned. “Maybe that's because you're not a very good lawyer.” He handed the newspaper across the desk to Seeley.

The story, on the front page beneath the fold, reported that Arnaud Baptiste, a sometime resident of Quebec City, with a record of criminal assaults across Quebec Province, had been arrested by the San Mateo police for the murder of San Francisco lawyer Robert Pearsall. The photograph next to the article was of one of those faces that look out from mug books in station houses around the world: cheeks drawn and sunken by missing teeth, eyes partly closed as if squinting into the sunlight or a police photographer's flash, lank hair falling across a too-narrow forehead.

Seeley was aware of Phan watching him as he read the story. “The first rung of the ladder,” he said.

Phan said, “Do you recognize him?”

“No.” Seeley remembered the fax that he'd asked Tina to send to Phan. “Did you show him Dusollier's picture?”

“He says he may know him. But he's not going to talk until he thinks we're ready to make a deal.”

“Did Lucy recognize Dusollier as the man who was talking to her father?”

“Last night,” Phan said. “We had to wait until the doorman came on at six this morning, but he identified both Baptiste and Dusollier. He puts them outside the apartment building one morning last week.” In the same flat tone, Phan said, “Dusollier's being taken into custody now.”

“And the reason you're talking to me?”

“Because we think you're involved with this.”

“Well,” Seeley said rising, “call me in Buffalo if you ever get any evidence.”

“For right now, we would prefer that you stay in San Francisco.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you can't stop me from leaving.”

“We can hold you as a material witness.”

Phan was bluffing. “If you want to hold me as a material witness, you'll need a subpoena and, with what you have, you'll never get one.” Seeley reached into his jacket for his wallet. “I'll be around for a few days, but after that, you can get me in Buffalo.” He took a business card from the wallet. “I'm sure you already have the number.”

Phan rose. “We'll be seeing you again.”

This time the bluff was so absurd that Seeley laughed. “Not if I see you first.”

Palmieri was at his desk in the neat white office working at his laptop. Seeley lifted the
Chronicle
off the corner of the desk. “Did you talk with Phan?”

“Friday afternoon,” Palmieri said. “After Gail Odum's piece came out.”

Seeley returned the paper to the desk. “This guy Baptiste is going to implicate Dusollier.”

“Is any of this going to splash onto our client?”

Seeley said, “Phan hinted at it, but he's a cop, and that's what cops do. Did you tell him anything about Vaxtek's part in the collusion?”

“And get disbarred?”

“What was Pearsall's part in it?”

Palmieri pushed back from the desk, but his eyes remained open. In this crisp pink-and-white striped shirt and dark tie, he was as collected as ever. “I finished my grieving for Bob. This doesn't change anything.”

“He was part of it, wasn't he?”

“Bob and Emil Thorpe,” Palmieri said. “Warshaw and the higher-ups in Switzerland made the deal, but Bob and Emil executed it.”

So Leonard had not been lying. “I wouldn't think that Pearsall was the kind of person who'd do that.”

“He wasn't,” Palmieri said. “It was one of those drawn-out negotiations where, when you're in the middle of it, it looks like you're just making one small tactical decision after another. Only later, when the negotiations are over and you've moved on to other things, you realize you've made a moral choice. We didn't discover Steinhardt's double bookkeeping, Emil's people did. Emil tried to use it to get Vaxtek to drop the case. But one of our associates had just found the record of Lily Warren's visit to Steinhardt's lab. That gave each side a lock on the other. Bob suggested that the parties settle, and Emil said he'd talk with his client. That's when the two companies came up with the idea of going through the motions of a trial, and getting a judicial stamp of validity on the patent. It didn't seem unreasonable to Bob at the time, so he went along.”

But, Seeley thought, if Pearsall was involved in the collusion, why would Dusollier have to arrange for his murder?

Palmieri said, “I can't understand why Bob had to be involved. All he had to do was what any trial lawyer does for his client—prove that the patent was valid. It was Emil who had to pull his punches.”

Seeley said, “Someone had to tell Thorpe where the soft spots were in Vaxtek's case so that he could avoid them.” Seeley wondered what Palmieri's part was. “Pearsall didn't tell you about the collusion, did he?”

Palmieri shook his head. “A couple of months into depositions, I figured out what was going on. Questions that didn't get asked. Requests for admissions and interrogatories that didn't get served.”

“And you confronted Pearsall?”

“Too many people I know have died of AIDS for me to be responsible for any more. I wouldn't repeat this to the lieutenant, but I could have killed Bob myself, I was so furious.”

“What did Pearsall say?”

“Bob said I should stop working on the case, but I told him I was going to go to the state bar, and if they didn't do anything, I'd go to the press.”

“But instead,” Seeley said, “Pearsall went to Warshaw and told him that the firm was withdrawing from the case.”

“Worse than that.” Tears suddenly filled Palmieri's eyes. “He told Warshaw that if Vaxtek didn't drop the lawsuit, he was going to the press with the story. I don't think he forgave himself for being part of this.” Palmieri wiped his eyes with his fingers. “So he got killed instead of me.”

“You were very brave.”

Palmieri shook his head. “If I were brave, I would have gone to the press myself.”

“With what? Your suspicions, and what Pearsall told you? No one would have believed you.”

“After Bob was killed, I could have gone to the police.”

“You were braver than that. Think of all those things you did to try to sabotage Vaxtek's case.”

“They weren't very effective, were they?”

“We got a hung jury, didn't we? I'd say, if there's a hero anywhere in this mess, it's you.” And, Seeley told himself, Lily.

“It's nice of you to say that, but—”

“You still have work to do,” Seeley said. He told Palmieri about the meeting in Judge Farnsworth's chambers, and explained how the judge was effectively forcing Vaxtek to license AV/AS on reasonable terms to any company that wanted to manufacture it. “You get to close the deal, Chris. Does the firm have an intellectual property transactions group? You'll need someone to draft a license agreement.”

“Sure.”

“Have them put together a license for Barnum to review. Once he's approved it, send a copy to Emil and get it to the judge by Friday.” The party that prepares the first draft of a contract has the upper hand in the negotiations that follow and, after what he'd done to his client in court, Seeley owed it that much.

“What about the royalty rate?”

“Get Nicolas Cordier to fax you a declaration of what he thinks a reasonable royalty should be. Get one from your friend Phil Driscoll, too. Use the lower number.”

“And if Vaxtek thinks it's too low?”

“Tell them the judge won't approve anything higher.” Seeley nodded at the laptop. “And you can turn that thing off. There won't be a retrial. No appeals. The case is over.”

Palmieri turned the screen toward Seeley. It was filled with blue sky, green waters, a white beach, and a jungle of palm trees. “Maui. My partner and I are going for a couple of weeks.”

Seeley forgot that Palmieri had been working on the case from the beginning, long before the trial itself began, through unending days of depositions, document review, and legal research. He didn't look it, but he had to be exhausted. Seeley felt a flood of affection for this lawyer who had, by himself, attempted to destroy Vaxtek's case.